A Network Admin/Web Development Student at Alfred State Sharing thoughts about stocks to invest in and other random oddities.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

EHR's in the small office

OK, so here's the story. Back in January when I bought up some UNH, which has since been killing me in unrealized losses, but I still bought it with conviction and stand by a $63.50 price target (I was planning on holding it till December anyway so I have a bit of risk tolerence)... oh yah anyway I wrote an email to Cramer about Health Care Reform and medicare/medicaid changes and got an email from one of his people on thursday asking if I'd be interested in calling in. Little did they realize I had write the intelligent email back in January but said they'd call me back at 3... I never heard from them... I still think the Audience Producer Paige is hawt though.

Anyway I ended up calling up a very smart guy at AETNA and talking to him about automation and about how EHR's are desperately needed, as well as did some research and noticed a nice little bill being pushed through by the 11th district of Georgia Rep.

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Washington, Apr 6 -U.S. Congressman Phil Gingrey, M.D. today testified before the House Committee on Small Business, Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform and Oversight. Gingrey discussed H.R. 4641, the ADOPT HIT Act, legislation he introduced to encourage the adoption of Health Information Technology by increasing tax breaks for physicians who invest in new technology. The hearing was titled: Can Small Healthcare Groups Feasibly Adopt Electronic Medical Records Technology?H.R. 4641, the ADOPT HIT Act, includes provision to:

Amend the Internal Revenue Code to increase the deduction allowed for the purchase of qualified health care information technology by health care professionals.

More than double the first year deduction of rapid depreciation for qualified Health IT equipment from $100,000 to $250,000.

Increase maximum purchase costs for qualifying equipment from $400,000 to $600,000 in any given year, allowing physicians to include other medical equipment purchases in the same year they purchase Health IT systems.

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So anyway, The market for EHR's are DESPERATELY NEEDED, the very intelligent rep from AETNA repeatedly said this. But we pry won't see it system wide until its a gov't mandate....

BUT, even bigger news is the required mandate in MA callign for univeral Health Care. One of their main complaints was 100,000 people eligible for Medicaid that weren't enrolled. Yet had the gov't required EHR's the second someone became eligible they could be enrolled in 6 seconds.

Small doctor's offices only have 12% implementation of EHR's, while in hospitals its a given that they'll be implemented, in offices with like a dozon or fewer doctor's it may not be very finacially viable, Gingry's proposal is a small step towards that.

While HMO's were The Health Care Cost consolidation wave a while back, I think administrative costs are the next wave of cutting costs (they account for almost 25% of premiums). Since we can't really hire out of country immigrants to do this data entry and support we can only fire them and replace them with computers.

Also that immgrant worker thing is the dumbest idea yet, the French are practically our enemy and we're trying to immitate their foreign worker policies, China is more forward thinking than them in globalization policies than the French.